A tree-shredding machine idled on the outer edge of the shed, the ejection funnel aimed out into the darkness, the entry chute that fed into the blades pointed back at Clete.
Legion turned off the tap and threw the bucket of water into Marvin’s face.
“Get up, boy. You fixing to hep me make some pig food, you,” he said.
Marvin blew water out of his nostrils and mouth and pushed himself up on his hands. Legion shoved him in the shoulder with his boot.
“Don’t make me tell you twice, no,” he said.
“I dint hear you,” Marvin said.
“Pick up the other side of that shithog. He going in the grinder. You be good, maybe you won’t end up there, too,” Legion said.
Marvin glanced at Zerelda.
“What about her?” he asked.
“She lay down wit’ the wrong dog. She got his fleas,” Legion said.
Marvin rose to his feet, his face dazed, his eyes looking back at Zerelda.
“You’ll let me go?” he said, the register of his voice falling. Then the skin on his face seemed to shrink when he heard the fear and cowardice in his own words.
I started to stand up straight, to move around the edge of the shed, where I could have a clear shot at Legion. But I felt an open handcuff come down on my right wrist, the steel tongue ratcheting into the lock. Sal locked the other end of the cuffs on a water pipe that elbowed out of the shed into the ground.
My handcuff key was in my right pocket and I couldn’t reach it with my left hand. I tried to grab his arm as he walked away from me, but he only turned and grinned, lifting a finger to his lips.
Sal rounded the corner of the shed and aimed the Beretta with both hands at Legion’s chest.
Legion released Clete’s arm, his eyes focusing on Sal, as though recognizing an old enemy.
“Where you come from, you?” Legion said.
“Looks like you been causing folks a lot of grief,” Sal said.
“I ain’t got no quarrel wit’ you.”
“Time for you to check out, Jack. I don’t mean boogie on down the road, either,” Sal said.
Legion stepped backward, tripping over the water bucket, his .38 revolver pushed down in his belt, a loud hiss rising from his throat. Then he bolted for the woods.
Sal began shooting, the recoil of the Beretta jerking against his wrists, sparks flying from the barrel. I had worked my right pants pocket inside out with my left hand now, and I inserted my handcuff key into the lock on my wrist and ran around the corner of the shed with my .45.
I could see Legion running through the woods toward the bay, hogs scattering around him, while Sal fired all ten rounds from the Beretta. A bolt of lightning struck the bay or the woods, I couldn’t tell which, and I saw Legion’s silhouette in the illumination, like a piece of scorched tin. Then the woods were dark again, and I saw Clete looking up at me in the glow of the Coleman lantern, his face white, a smile at the corner of his mouth.
“Better hook up the pinhead, big mon,” he said.
I cuffed Marvin Oates and put him on the ground, then knelt down and used my pocketknife to cut the tape on Zerelda’s wrists. A pair of headlights bounced across the wooden bridge over the rain ditch, levering up and down as the car came too fast across the ground. Then Joe Zeroski’s Chrysler braked by the shed and Joe and Baby Huey got out on each side. Joe wore a pair of tight slacks and a formfitting strap undershirt, his flat chest rising and falling, his vascular arms pumped. He studied his niece’s battered face and stroked her hair.
Then he looked down at Marvin Oates. A small chrome-plated automatic pistol protruded from his pocket.
“This is the man who beat my daughter to death?” he said.
“We going to have a problem here, Joe?” I said.
“I asked you if this is the piece of shit who killed my Linda.”
“Yes, sir, I think he probably is,” I said.